Chatting with: Web Summit

Web Summit has it’s Private Studio at LACS Anjos and we went to find out more about their day-to-day work.

We organize the largest technology conference in Europe, hosted in Lisbon at the Altice Arena and FIL every year in November, gathering +70,000 people from all over the world. We also organize Collision in Canada and in 2022 we will host RISE in Malaysia and brand new events in Brazil and Japan.

Lisbon is one of the main European clusters of entrepreneurship, and a leading tech hub. We are proud in working with the public authorities in building a solid reputation for Lisbon and Portugal

We spoke with António Neves Costa, Public Affairs Executive at Web Summit.

Describe your work in three words. 

Build relationships. Creativity.

What is best about your job? The possibility of creating projects that have impact, and also working with a young and super talented team. 

Describe a typical day at Web Summit.

We are all working remotely, in offices in different locations. Like many other companies, we spend many hours in conference calls… We work hard to prepare the best conferences, have the best speakers, make our participant’s experience unique. But we also try to have a good time – this week we are going to have a virtual session on how to make gnocchi! 🙂

What music do you listen to while working? 

Ui, what a mix!…You can’t imagine, there’s a little bit of everything, but I’m known for my taste for 80s music…

How did Web Summit start? What’s the main idea behind Web Summit?

Web Summit scaled over the past decade to become what Financial Times now calls the world’s largest tech conference.

We have always wanted to create unique experiences for our participants, believing that networking is the real reason why people go to events. At Web Summit, we enable thousands of startups, investors from all over the world to make meaningful connections. Whether it is just meeting interesting people or creating business relationships and finding partners. Of course, listening to world leaders on our stages is an added value, but what makes Web Summit truly unique is the networking among our participants. The majority of attendees that come to see our speakers, tell us afterwards the biggest reason was networking, whether it’s just the excitement of personally meeting interesting people or having very clear business objectives.

What do you like most about LACS? 

I like having several interesting companies in the same space, the possibility of meeting new people, and I quite like hanging out at the common spaces.

When you were a child, what did you want to be? 

I wanted to be an archaeologist. Who didn’t want to be Indiana Jones?!

What was your first job? 

I started many years ago at the Committee of the Regions, in Brussels.

What is the secret to success? 

At Web Summit, we truly believe in the power of engineering serendipity. Our software is powered to bring recommendations that are most valuable to participants, we are maybe the only large event company that builds its own software. For years now a team of 50+ engineers, product managers and designers have built software to make our events a lot more productive.

And it’s great to do it in Lisbon, to be able to show the city and the country to tens of thousands of people who, unsurprisingly, fall hopelessly in love with Portugal!

Advice for someone just starting a business? 

It will take courage, imagination and persistence – but if you have a dream, go after it!

What are your favorite places in Lisbon? 

Campo de Ourique is my neighborhood, I love walking the streets. We are very lucky to have Monsanto, an entire park accessible to the city. And I like to linger everywhere, from Graça to Marvila, from Príncipe Real to Tejo!